What are we telling people? Turkeys are painfully debeaked and detoed without anesthesia as soon as they’re born. A North Carolina State University researcher described the mutilations turkeys suffer at the hatchery as “trauma” and “major surgery.”

In the turkey houses, the young birds are crowded in filth. They suffer from manmade respiratory and intestinal diseases, ammonia burned eyes and ulcerated feet. Most turkeys are painfully lame. Some turkeys try to walk on their wings to get food and water. Many turkeys die of heart attacks from forced rapid growth.

At the slaughterhouse, turkeys are torn from the transports crates, hung upside down and given painful electric shocks through their faces, bodies and feet. Turkeys are Not Stunned. They are excluded from the Humane Slaughter Act. They are paralyzed and kept alive during the slaughter process to keep their hearts beating. Many turkeys are scalded alive.

A recent PETA investigation at a Butterball slaughter plant in Arkansas shows workers stomping on live turkeys, slamming them against walls, exploding their skulls and popping out their spines. (www.ButterballCruelty.com)

A recent investigation by Farm Sanctuary at one of the largest turkey breeding operations in the Midwest shows the obscenity of artificial insemination of female birds and milking of male birds and the total sadness of the lives of these birds. “The guys pick the toms up and put them on the bench and they rub them up, squeeze them, and it ejaculates the tom.” The rest of the time these bright-eyed male birds are penned in the dark.

And “We observed employees pushing and pulling fearful turkey hens through a small door, into the artificial insemination (AI) room, and we were told the young hens are curious and friendly with employees until the first couple of AIs – and then they run from you. . . . Music blares in the background, as we come to a pile of dead turkeys lying on the floor and others stuffed into plastic bags near a wheelbarrow,” and so on. (“Thanksgiving’s Nasty Little Secret,” Satya Nov. 2006.www.satyamag.com)

Turkeys are alert, intelligent, friendly birds. They are friends, not food.

Please join United Poultry Concerns in the Lafayette Park Southwest Quadrant on November 21 across from the White House from Noon – 4 PM. Stay as long as you can. The turkeys need you. For more information, call 757-678-7875 or email karen@upc-online.org